


Those Who Conquered

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Series: You and You [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 13:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6155471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morris and Lindquist, on the rooftop, with their doubles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Conquered

**Author's Note:**

> For dogmatix. Companion fic/AU to "It's Hard to Tell," where the rooftop scene went...a little differently than you may have assumed after Carlos went downstairs. Props to kanjoku for the idea that Morris might be his double!

Morris has seen sandstorms before. He already knows it's nothing like Hollywood: everything hazy yet bright, heroic figures clearly visible as they walk against the wind. What's coming at them is bringing night with it, and until it passes, the smartest thing they can do is stay out of the wind entirely.

So of course he's on the roof of the lab, helping Lindquist rescue the telescope. It's an expensive piece of equipment, true, but he's on the verge of getting to be too old to climb around on rooftops in sandstorms. That Lindquist is sentimentally attached to the thing is probably a deciding factor. Besides, if it wasn't him out here, it'd be Carlos. Half the time it's Carlos anyway.

He hears the access door bang open at his back, knows who it is even before he hears the helpful shout of, "Here!" It's Carlos, on the roof, with a tarp. He wonders, mostly amused, if there's a special edition of Clue he can buy designed specifically for suicidal bosses.

Lindquist rushes over to meet him, grabbing the tarp with what starts as a grin and doesn't _quite_ end with him sputtering sand. "We've got it up here!" Lindquist shouts, rocking a little on his feet as a hard gust hits them all sidelong. "Soon as we wrap Baby up, we'll meet the rest of you in the break room!"

_Baby._ Morris lets himself huff a quiet laugh; they probably can't hear him over the wind.

Most of Morris' former bosses would have taken the opportunity to clap Lindquist on the shoulder, offer a hearty 'Good luck!' and then beat a quick retreat. "You're sure?" Carlos asks, body canting towards the telescope they've been battening down like he's just waiting for an invitation before leaping into action.

"Positive, boss!"

Morris keeps his chuckle to himself this time, just in case. _Good man,_ he thinks as Lindquist moves away before Carlos can argue. Carlos has been a better boss than any of them had expected, and Morris for one would like to keep him. If Carlos makes them work for it at times, at least they're never bored.

The early afternoon looks like midnight by the time they get the tarp wrapped to Lindquist's satisfaction, but Morris doesn't mind. They're a dozen steps from the door, shelter clearly in sight, and the worst of the storm has yet to hit. They have time to be careful, time to be...curious as his hands begin to tingle. It's a strange sensation, one he remembers from his summers as a boy after a long afternoon spent shoving their ancient push-mower across what seemed like acres of lawn. Afterwards his hands would feel half-dead, nothing but clumsy gloves he was stuck _inside--there's something in--_

\-- _side, how did he get_ inside _someone?_

Recoiling with a jerk, he stumbles back a step and finds himself staring at a set of broad shoulders familiar only from bad angles in mirrors. The dark head of hair right in front of his eyes is starting to get a bit shaggy, in need of a trim: problematic, now that the town lacks a barber. He can feel the weight of advancing middle age in his own bones when the other whips around a hair too slowly, not quite as graceful as he'd been at forty, and he knows every shallow line on the square-jawed face staring back at him in dismay.

His original gapes at him, but Morris doesn't expect any less. It might be instinct or Night Vale's gift to him, but with the first real breath he draws, he knows the horror his original is feeling, can sense in his bones what he's meant to do.

"Who...are you?" his original asks, voice nearly steady, as the other one--Lindquist, that's it--demands the same of his double in a shaken squeak.

_Smile,_ his inner compass urges, so he does, as slowly and unpleasantly as he can.

"Well, now...I suppose that depends on you."

He has to throw the first punch. His original thinks of himself as a peaceful man, a man of reason, and he isn't far wrong. Not enough to save him, but not far wrong.

He can feel the sandstorm howling closer, its malevolence a dull beat inside his head. There's something _other_ borne along its winds, something grating that tastes of copper and hot glass. It doesn't fit, doesn't belong, and the sands are carrying it like a virus though it has no physical mass. It's inside his original, spreading through him like a tumor. It's inside him, festering in the pit of his stomach. The only difference between them is that _he_ knows how to burn it out.

With every blow that lands, every breath that leaves him in a pained, furious grunt, he _pulls_ at the seething heat pulsing under his original's skin, dragging it into himself. Rage turns his vision red, but hate is a hunger that lodges in his belly, makes him bare his teeth and yearn to bite. He could snap this old fool's neck in an instant, take down the trusting _young_ fool up here with him in half the time. He could tear this whole place apart with his bare hands until not one brick is left standing, first the lab and then--

He shudders, lets the next punch snap his head back and stagger him to one knee, the red pulse in his brain shaken out of its insistent rhythm. _No._ He's _of_ Night Vale. He could never harm her, never let her be harmed.

The hands that clamp around his throat are reassuringly strong, but there's only desperation staring back at him, the sandstorm's madness all but leached from his original. He's left only enough to see the job through, and he'll take that last thread with him when he goes. The part of him that still remembers some fifty years of a life he's never lived has always hated the story of the scapegoat; he's a man of science, not superstition, has always felt sorry for the goat. Too bad he doesn't have the breath for it; he'd laugh.

It's then he hears it. _Feels_ it. Something shifts, the air around him vibrating with the hollow tension of struck crystal, a demand--a _command_ \--coming through with an urgency he can't ignore. He's needed, and the _push_ makes him do what he'd otherwise never consider.

Grabbing at his original's wrists, he rips panic-tight hands away without effort, slamming his head forward to butt his original square in the face. Bone cracks and cartilage crumples, but he's not done. Ramming all the hate and simmering violence he'd taken upon himself back down his original's throat, he empties himself of all of it even as he's clenching a fist in short, dark hair.

He's _of_ Night Vale. He doesn't hesitate.

He doesn't expect to feel sickened afterwards, but staring down at the still figure at his feet, the widening stain of blood under a head that is...not quite the right _shape,_ he finds himself having to clutch at the low wall behind him to stay on his feet. He's just...he's killed his _original,_ the part of him that was real. He wasn't...supposed to _do_ that. He isn't sure what this means. If he'll disappear. If Night Vale will take him back. If not for his stolen memories, he wouldn't know how to _be_ apart from her in the first place.

"Oh, fuck," Lindquist strangles out a few feet away, and Morris can see Night Vale staring back from his white-ringed eyes. Lindquist's own original is nowhere to be seen, but there are traces of blood and hair on the side of the wall, and he can guess what he'll see if he glances over the edge of the roof at the street below. "Fuck, what do we do? We just--oh, shit--"

Morris pushes himself to stand on his own two feet as Lindquist loses the contents of someone's stomach, too rattled to be any good to him now. He can still feel the call. It's twice as urgent as before.

"I'll handle it," he says, though really he's only promising the task at hand. What Night Vale wants, she gets.

He totters down the stairs, not even sure where to begin, certain only that she'll _push_ at him until he gets it right. He doesn't expect to find the problem right there in the lobby, two figures locked together, equally familiar. One Carlos can't seem to choose between being affronted or horrified. The other smiles mockingly, just like Morris had, only Morris can feel the difference from across the room. That hot glass stench is almost overwhelming, the searing reds and oranges of an ugly-familiar power almost burning through the double's skin. The commandeered sandstorm, the subversion of the town: _this_ is what it was all for.

"How else would I know about your little radio host?" the false double taunts, pressed obscenely against his original, eyes hot as he watches the real Carlos struggle.

The pit of Morris' stomach turns to ice. Cecil. He's talking about Cecil. That thing was sent for the Voice of Night Vale.

Strong as Morris is, the false double is modeled after a man younger and fitter, has more than Night Vale's power to draw on. He's careful not to make a sound as he pulls a fire extinguisher from a hook on the wall, thankful he works with people who believe breaking a glass pane to get at emergency equipment is ridiculous.

"Not mine," the real Carlos objects automatically. Morris honestly doesn't know--didn't know?--will _never_ know how someone so smart can be so willfully dumb.

"He's yours," the false double says, his flat tone making the hairs on the back of Morris' neck stand on end. "For a little while longer. If it's any consolation, it's your name he'll be screaming."

Over Morris' dead body.

The part of him that _is_ Night Vale is shocked frozen in its tracks to see those sentiments echoed in spades.

The boss loses it. There's not a hint of anything cautious or restrained in his struggles now; he fights like a man who doesn't give a damn about anything but taking out the other guy, but there's not a hint of that unfriendly sister-power anywhere inside him. He's not _of_ Night Vale--he wasn't even born here--but Morris knows an ally when he sees one.

When Morris brings the fire extinguisher down on the false double's head, he has a little extra help from Night Vale herself to make sure the job gets done. It's not just the threat to her Voice that makes her impatient. She's noticed the boss before this, but she's never really _seen_ him. He's willing to bet she's never seen anyone like him, either; God knows Morris hasn't. Hadn't. He's actually kind of sorry he probably won't get the chance to see how that plays out.

The boss is still staring at his hijacked double when Night Vale sends Morris one last push, orders coming down from on high. It's a complex commandment he needs a moment to interpret, but near the top of the list is: _Stay there. Stay close._

At the very top is: _Watch this one._ Watch as in observe, report, evaluate. Watch as in protect. He can do that--he can happily do that, he finds--but only if Carlos, human and rational, doesn't suspect a thing.

"Are you all right?" he asks, purposefully letting his voice go strained. It's not entirely an act.

He knows--he might as well say he remembers, since he's the only Morris left--that the boss takes some looking-after with the way he rushes headlong into danger. At least there's Lindquist for backup. Reilly and Borowicz...probably don't need any encouragement, and he's almost afraid of what Night Vale would unleash with them for templates. Teasdale...well, maybe they'll just take a little stroll up to the roof before the storm dies down. The boss takes a _lot_ of looking-after.

But what Night Vale wants, she gets, and Morris can tell she's seen something in the boss that she likes.


End file.
